I just cut some buns open and popped them under the grill ...
The Hamburgers should be done any minute now.
Who told cows they should stand under trees during a thunderstorm anyway?

We've had a number of thunderstorms, these last few weeks.
During one of them, my friends daughter's dad rang. After they had conversed fo a few minutes, the box on the wall went 'Zzzztt!!' and the phone went dead. I couldn't believe the phone was dead — the internet connection was still working.
However, no amount of button pushing would revive the phone and in the end I called Swisscom on my mobile to ask for assistance.

The woman on the other end was very sympathetic.
"W'rum hänse telefonieret, wenn's gwittret?!" She demanded to know.
Why were you using the phone during a thunderstorm?!
Apparently, when the phone rang, I was expected to jump up and yell
"Stand back! Don't touch it!"

She was so kind.
She offered to send a technician within the next three days.
Well, that's nice of you, I'll just take the next few days off work, then, so I'm sure to be here when the guy arrives ...
Any chance of something a little more precise?
Friday morning between 07:00 and 10:00 was her answer.
For the two days in between, she would have all my calls diverted to my mobile.

I do, so like Switzerland's Customer Services.

Oh, there you are — a flash of lightning — I'll have to take a look and see, if my cows are done yet ...

A friend recently came over for dinner.
During dinner she repeatedly stopped chewing and cocked her head to one side,
After a while, she informed me:
"I could never live here!"

I suppose it's a good thing I hadn't invited her to come and live here!

Yesterday, the rain would have made things easier for her.
The cows were huddled tightly together under the trees and somehow managed not to move at all.
The sound of cow bells was gone!

I'm sometimes amazed at the things that disturb people.
Friends who spent the night here once, got up in the middle of the night to put planks of wood under the flow of the spring outside because the sound of the water was preventing them from sleeping.
Strangely the water will very occasionally stop flowing for a few minutes —
that's when I wake up!

The ultimate torture for some, obviously, would be the nights when a couple of cows come and lie down next to the spring to chew the cud. And then, at five in the morning, the cockerel down the road begins to crow.
I think it's idyllic.
Some, for some reason, don't ...

I have lived close to St.Gallen, now, for nearly ten years.
Before that, I worked in St.Gallen for six years.
In those 15 years I have noticed that they have a strange custom ...
... the St.Galler Open Air Festival is always held at the worst possible time of the year.

Do you remember Woodstock?
Remember the weather on the third day of the event — the Sunday?
Right — it teemed down with rain and gusts of wind threatened to topple the lighting masts.
Well, that is what the weather at the St.Galler Open Air Festival is usually like!

I worked in a building situated at one of the festival entrances for ten years and I stood at the window many a year to watch hunched up figures, carrying rucksacks and tents, shuffle through the mud towards a weekend of music, alcohol, marihuana and muck.

Yesterday was only slightly different.
After two weeks of constant rain, the tight valley which hosts the event was waterlogged.
At midday, yesterday, the weather suddenly brightened and hordes of people clothed in t-shirts and rucksacks emerged from St.Gallen main station happily puffing away at joints and lifting their smiling faces to the skies.
They made their way by bus to the soggy meadows of Sittertal, to pitch their tents and, as the first performances were already on Thursday evening, I don't really want to try to imagine the results, but I'm sure that by the time Cypress Hill appeared on stage at around 23:00, people were, in places, already ankle deep in the mire.
Just to put the icing on the cake, while The Niceguys and The Flaming Lips and The Cold War Kids were on stage (there are four different stages to get wet at), entertainment began in earnest; it rained in buckets full for two hours!

Luckily, by 05:00 this morning it stopped raining for about four hours, so anyone already awake might have breakfasted in relative dryness, from the knees up, at least.
There is more rain to come during today and the forecast is for rain until next Friday.
I bet they'll have fun clearing the mess up afterwards!



The images above are from previous years, courtesy of Stadt St.Gallen (St.Gallen can do it.) and Flickr.
The image below is from today, courtesy of the organisers . The make-shift sign says
"Warning – Damp areas & Danger of splashing"

If you are wondering what you are missing, here is the programme.
Although there is some great music being presented, I can assure you, I shan't be there. Again.

I don't know what your weather is doing but we just had a week of rain, storms, floods and [minor] landslides.The local train was replaced by a bus service for a few hours because the tracks were flooded and the local fire- brigade was up all night on Thursday, draining cellars.
With no change of weather in sight, I started contemplating the wonderful weather we had during winter ...



This is the cathedral square in St.Gallen.
If you click on the image, you'll finde there are two versions of it.

Have you ever had someone tell you that you live in a world of your own?
Well, with my new lens, I can prove that I do.



Click to see the larger version.

Sandra commented on my last post that Schwiizerdüütsch (Swiss German) is a spoken and not a written language.
Strange, I was under a very different impression. In the past nine years, I seldom received anything in writing from a Swiss colleague or acquaintance that wasn't written in Swiss German. I have post cards, e-mails, text messages and chat messages to prove it — all of them unintelligible.

I'll explain what Sandra meant.*
Because the official language in northern Switzerland is German, some rules have to exist governing orthography and grammar. The Germans have been working on the rules for many years now and supply them in the shape of a Duden — the official reference books for the German language. The Duden even contains a number of words that are only used in Switzerland, just to make sure the Swiss know how to spell them. **
Because The Rules only govern High German and the Swiss never bothered to jot down the rules for Swiss German, we have a free-for-all when anyone wishes to write in their everyday language. The result is chaotic.

One of the things people here lament when they acquire a new mobile telephone, is the fact that the text programmes are set to T9.
"You can't write an SMS", they moan [Short Message Service].
T9, for the uninformed, tries to guess what you intend to write and, as soon as you have typed two characters, will begin to suggest words for auto-completion.
It can't speak Schwiizerdüütsch!

Here are two examples of written chaos:
At work there is a group of between eight and ten colleagues that cook for each other every Friday. I sent a chat to one of them asking who was due to cook, the coming Friday. The answer:
"Hemmo nonig abgmacht, luägemo denn vorzuä amel."
The translation, or thereabout:
"Wir haben's noch nicht abgemacht, wir schauen [entscheiden] dann laufend [immer]."
We haven't reached an agreement yet, we decide as the occasion arises."
If you study the two different versions of German, I'm sure you'll notice the similarities.

I sometimes ask for a translation but this particular young lady is incapable of writing High German — and I'm not joking.
A gem that she was unable to supply a written translation for and I don't understand even now:
I asked if she had produced a specific design ...
"Nei, abo übonoo so wjä sie's mer gshickt ka hend..."
I gathered she was trying to tell me that someone had sent it to her. Bele, one of my readers, sent me the translation:
"Nein, aber so übernommen wie Sie es mir zugeschickt haben ..."
No, I used it as it was sent to me - so easy, when you see the correct solution.

I sometimes can't make up my mind which is worse – written Schwiizerdüütsch or the spoken Appenzeller dialect.

*Some people say that Swiss German is dialect. I'm not quite sure that a language that develops at different speeds in different regions doesn't become several languages ...
Take Gaelic, for instance. Both the Scots and the Irish speak Gaelic (which developed from Celtic) but they don't understand each other or the Welsh (Celtic).

**Old High German, today, only used in Switzerland, it often states.

I had visitors from Germany last week.
An old friend 'C' and her daughter.
They stayed all week and I took them out sightseeing a couple of times.
Being German, C's German is pretty good — she even gets all her prepositions and tenses right, which I don't.

The Swiss around this area also speak German — at least, they think they do.
I've got used to the local Appenzeller and can make out 95% of what they are saying. In St.Gallen, I even understand 100%!
But please don't ask me to try to talk Swiss German — I couldn't, not in any of its many varieties.

We stood in St.Gallen watching a painter from a distance. She turned, saw us watching and said something like
"chaasch goluaga cho, wannst wötsch"
At the sound of those hair-balls being hacked up, C looked at me with a question mark planted in the middle of her face.
I translated:
"Du kannst näher kommen und schauen, wenn du möchtest." (You may come and take a closer look, if you wish).
Did you notice the similarities?

German and Swiss German started to evolve in different directions during the middle ages. To be honest with you I can't shake off the feeling that Swiss German remained standing, while German-German developed to todays standards.
By comparison Swiss German is grammatically much simpler than High German and has a much smaller vocabulary.

The Swiss think that the Germans are arrogant. The truth is, though, the further north a German comes from, the more precisely he or she will speak. This, combined with the fact that they have a more diversified vocabulary, easily gives the impression of arrogance. In actual fact he or she is not 'speaking down at you' its just the way they learned to speak the language.

On Wednesday we drove into Appenzell itself. You've heard of Appenzeller Cheese. Of course you have, you've probably even bought some, after all, it is exported all over the world.
C decided to buy some real Appenzeller cheese from a real Appenzeller dairy. Each of the different cheeses were labeled to state their degree of ripeness. Classic, Surchoix and Rääs amongst others.
Pointing at the cheese labeled Surchoix, C asked "Was ist das genau?"
"What is that exactly?"
She was rewarded with a string of guttural, hacking and nasal sounds.
Looking at me wide-eyed she asked "What language was that?"
"It was Appenzellerdüütsch," I replied "but don't ask me what he said, I haven't a clue!"

As I said, I can understand my local neighbours when they speak their version of Appenzeller German (Appenzell Outer Rhode), but five miles down the road is the Border to Appenzell Inner Rhode, the smallest of the Swiss Cantons.
When you cross the border, there should be a sign to say "Warning, you are leaving the German Sector!"
Crickey! I understand more Welsh ...